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Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

Happy Valentine’s Day ya’ll!

I must admit that I’m pretty bad at Valentine’s Day, mostly because I suck at following directions. Every year, Betsy asks for one thing: Chocolate Covered Strawberries from the store. Anything else is fine, but that’s what she really wants. Not roses or rings. Strawberries.

Oh… and she also doesn’t want some homemade knockoff. She wants the simple, pro version.

So, in short, she does not want these chocolate covered strawberry cupcakes for Valentine’s Day. That’s why I made them for myself last week. (Although she snuck one or two I think!)

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This year I shall not stray. I will brave the masses and purchase some official fruit covered in fancy chocolate.

But my heart will be with these cupcakes, because they were amazing.

The tricks to making them work are as follows:

Don’t overcook or overfill the cupcakes.

Find the ripest strawberries you can find and slice them before snuggling them into the cupcakes so they are easier to bite.

Go heavy on the frosting. It’ll look like too much but there’s a strawberry under there to lighten it up.

Frosting:

Helpful Equipment

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and line a cupcake pan with liners. In a large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients for cupcakes except the sugar. (Flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, salt).

In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, sugars, vanilla and melted butter.

Add half of the wet stuff to the dry stuff, followed by the milk, then add the last of the wet ingredients and whisk until just combined. The batter will be pretty loose.

Pour batter into 12 cupcake liners until it’s about halfway filled. Do not overfill!

Bake cupcakes for 18-20 minutes at 350 degrees F. A tester should come out clean from the center of the cupcakes. Let cupcakes cool completely before frosting.

For frosting, add butter and cocoa powder to mixing bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment. Beat until very smooth, about 3-4 minutes. Add vanilla and then start adding the powdered sugar in one cup batches alternating with 1 tablespoon of milk. After 3-4 cups of powdered sugar, the frosting should be soft, but hold it’s shape well. If it seems very stiff, add in more milk.

To finish cupcakes, wash strawberries and dry them very well. Slice off stems and slice strawberries vertically a few times. Then press into a cupcake right in the center so the stem part of the strawberry is in the middle of the cupcake.

Use a medium to large piping tip to pipe chocolate frosting around the strawberries. Optionally, garnish with coarse sugar.

Cupcakes are fine for a few hours at room temperature or store overnight in the fridge. They are best at room temperature though.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cupcakes

This is a simple chocolate cupcake recipe that doesn’t require a mixer!

Whisk together the dry stuff, minus the sugars.

Basics.

Whisk together the eggs, sugars, vanilla, and melted butter separately. Then add half of that to the dry stuff, followed by the milk, and then rest of the wet stuff. Whisk it until it’s just combined. It’ll be pretty wet.

Wet batter

Pour the batter into lined cupcakes. Try to only fill halfway full. If I’m being honest, I overfilled these a bit which is why they sunk a bit when I pulled them out of the oven. For our purposes (stuffing them with strawberries) it wasn’t a concern.

In the cups.

After 18-20 minutes at 350 degrees F. your cupcakes should be done. Be sure to let them cool completely before continuing.

Not perfect, but good enough.

The frosting for these is simple but SO delicious. Mix the cocoa powder and butter first and then add the vanilla.

My little frosting secret these days is to add 1 tablespoon of meringue powder which makes the frosting really stable.

When you start to add the powdered sugar, alternate with 1 cup of sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk. The resulting buttercream will be soft, but easily hold its shape when piped.

That frosting though.

Then you need some strawberries! Do your best to find nice ripe ones!

The best I could find…

Most importantly, before you stick these in the cupcake, slice them vertically a few times so that when you take a bite of the cupcake, you don’t take the whole strawberry out. Just chop it up a bit and then place it on the cupcake and press it into the cake.

Then frost away! I like to use a medium Wilton piping tip for smooth decoration.

Slice the berries!

I did a good thing!

BOOM.

I added a little coarse sugar to the top of my cupcakes, but that’s optional for sure.

I just love how you bite into these and are expecting a huge mouthful of frosting only to be greeted with a light and fresh berry! As you might guess, the flavors are perfect together and the combo of fresh berry, rich cake, and chocolate frosting is pretty much the best.

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Love Your Leftovers includes breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert options as well as a wide range of cuisines. Each main dish includes eight to ten creative recipes for leftovers. With chapters on kitchen and pantry basics and Meal Planning 101, as well as a helpful index of vegetarian and thirty-minute meals. This isn’t just a book you might like, it’s the book your kitchen (and family) need.